Those of you who did my “Lost in Translation” GCRPK5 cache may see many similarities between that cache and this one. For one thing there are the same number of letters and words in the title-but that has absolutely nothing to do with solving this little puzzle.
Scientist Omar Biddle was a colorful person that few outside of the electronics industry have ever heard of but his contributions affect all of the consumer electronic devices we use today. Some of his more radical ideas met with resistance when first proposed. He actually came up with the idea for “Chroma Key” where a person (like a weather man on TV) is filmed in front of a blue screen that is replaced electronically by something more meaningful like a weather map. Later in his career he collaborated with Ulysses T. Marconi, another little known electronic genius, on several projects which produced many patents.
One project they worked on in 1993 involved designing a decoder board for the L1 signals received from the GPS satellite system. Although somewhat primitive by today’s standards, the algorithm they used was a breakthrough at the time allowing much faster satellite lock than was possible until then. Using stock RAM memory made by Hitachi, a custom Zilog LSI processor, and some off-the-shelf ICs to process the signals received by the Motorola receiver board, they made a usable portable GPS system for the military. However, the complete GPS unit was the size of a lunchbox and only had a 4 line by 24 character alpha-numeric display for the readout.
I collect strange and unusual electronic devices and was lucky enough to buy two of these units through a DOD surplus sale. Because it may still be considered classified I cannot show you the entire board but I absolutely have to show you a small section of the REV-1 board containing the processor and memory used and I hope you find it as interesting as I do. Omar was the leader on this first revision while Ulysses refined the process for the REV-2 board (which I showed you in the “Lost in Translation” cache GCRPK5).
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Oh, I almost forgot, the cache is not at the above coordinates although it is the only place to park. The cache is well within a few tenths of a mile of these coordinates and a very easy walk. The cache is a magnetic key holder with a logsheet, a stubby pen, and an equally short pencil inside. You can easily walk to within a foot of the cache. There is a high muggle factor so please use stealth and put the container back in the exact position. And one last thing, it isn’t in anything electrical or any lamp post (although it might be right next to one) so please resist the urge to mess with any you may find.
You can check your answers for this puzzle on Geochecker.com.